


i hold with those who favour fire

by interestinggin



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Animal Sacrifice, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, OT3, Religious Conflict, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan does not believe in devils. But he believes in love. </p><p>Love is patient, love is kind. Athelstan sees through a mirror, dimly, and he has more now as a slave than he has ever had before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i hold with those who favour fire

**Author's Note:**

> for [sylvi10](http://sylvi10.tumblr.com), who wanted "a good fic about ragnar and athelstan and religious symbolism" for her birthday. set between series 1 and series 2.
> 
> title, of course, from robert frost’s [fire and ice](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice), which is the most athelstan thing i have ever read.

Athelstan does not believe in devils.

He is aware that this is, or would once have been, heresy; blasphemy enough to have tongues torn with pincers and eyes fed to the ravens of his master’s god. Slander enough to earn a place in Hell a thousand times over. Lies enough to make the men he once called brother weep.

Athelstan, were he of a mood to defend this sullen rage (and he is not, has not been of such a disposition since he first broke the sea foam with a dead man’s head lolling open-mouthed on his shoulder), would explain that he does not deny the existence of the Devil, nor of his servants. How can he? He lives with them.

He just doesn’t believe in them.

And he no longer sees why the distinction matters, and that, he thinks, would have mattered once.

 

He is unlike anyone Athelstan has ever met.

He is taller, naturally, and broader - even the most hardworking and well fed men in England were neither so lofty nor so strong. He wears his hair longer, and strangely shaved, as if he has attempted a bastardised tonsure of his own, and he covers his skin with ink and scars and celebrates them with a quirk of his lips.

He smiles often, but when he does, he stares.

Athelstan is not sure if he trusts that smile.

 

Lagertha should scare him - and she does - but not as much as she once did.

Judith slew Holofernes; Jael and Deborah killed Sisera. Women have fought as long as men have, and Athelstan has known this all his life; he knew his mother, after all, if he knew no other. But she glories in it as her husband does, smearing blood on her cheeks to please her gods and wielding her sword with a victory cry. He cannot help but stir at the sight of it.

She is beautiful. He is vaguely aware of this, but no more than he is of the sunset, or the white-hot heat of the hearthfire.

For like the flames, it hurts to look at her.

 

She loves her husband. This much is undeniable. But it is a strange sort of love, one that Athelstan cannot understand. It is a love that causes rage, and violence, and is more akin to the storms of their thunder god than any tender love he has read about.

Athelstan has never been in love. He thought he was, once, but it was his own foolishness.

But he knows of love. Love is patient, love is kind. Athelstan sees through a mirror, dimly, and he has more now as a slave than he has ever had before.

 

There are ravens on the farm. He worried about them at first, for their beaks looked cruel and their eyes dark; one of them, he is certain, winked at him. He worried about it for some time, shooing them away with a half-scared run and a wave of his hands whenever he could.

Ragnar laughed when he told him.

“How many ravens?” he asked, smiling, leaning against the doorframe.

Athelstan thinks about it. “Two,” he says finally. “Sometimes. Usually just the one.”

The other man raises his head and stares fixedly at the roof. He is silent for so long that Athelstan wonders if he heard him.

“There are two - ” he begins again, but Ragnar speaks over him.

“If Huginn and Muninn want to watch over us, priest, we will make them welcome,” he says. His hand reaches out and ruffles the top of Athelstan’s head, where the hair is short and itching as it grows out.

Athelstan ducks, and Ragnar laughs again. Outside, one of the goats bleats as if in fear, and Athelstan watches Ragnar’s eyes darken as he comes a decision.

“Come on,” he says, grabbing his axe from the table, and he drags Athelstan outside to make his first sacrifice. It will leave him bloody and horrified, but somehow, a little closer to peace.

 

The work is monotonous, but no more than he is used to. He finds he enjoys working with his hands more than before; he has tilled fields and gardens for years now, but here the air is colder, crisper, and he cannot help but feel a leap of joy that he can whistle, or hum, and mutter while he works, if he wishes to. It will earn him no more than a look of scorn from Bjorn, which he is likely to receive anyway.

To begin with, he clasps his hands in prayer every few hours, just for five minutes, just to feel safe.

It doesn’t work.

The others prayed, and it brought them only death. Athelstan cannot believe it was their sins that earned them this; if it was, he thinks, how has he come to be spared?

 

Or hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

 

“I would like to be a free man,” he says.

Ragnar is dismissive. “If it means so much to you.”

“It does.”

But he does not know why it does.

 

Your Father has freed the Israelites from the yoke of the Pharaoh. A slave may be beaten; a slave may not be killed. An Israelite must not be a slave. You were slaves in Egypt, and you were freed. A slave may be taken from countries around you. You may not enslave a woman captured. The Lord your God has set ye free. A slave seeking refuge must be given protection. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. Remember that I have set you free.

Athelstan does not understand.

 

Sometimes they speak so quickly that he cannot understand. They slip into dialects and ways of speaking that he has never heard before, and when the room is dark and Athelstan’s head is thick with ale and woodsmoke it is hard to keep abreast of the conversation. Floki tells stories, and Athelstan watches them come to life in the fire, dancing amongst the flames, flickering on Gyda’s worried brow. The hall gives way to battlefields, to fire or ice or darkness, to stars caught in the branches of trees and blood and bones growing under the earth.

Ragnar lies with his head in Lagertha’s lap; peaceful, listening, his mouth twisted in that ever-present smile. She has a hand resting on his braid, lips half-parted, bright and soft and wet.

She leans down and whispers something in his ear. He laughs. Athelstan feels a slow, sweet burn in the pit of his stomach. A warmth. A safety. A rage.

“The priest is blushing,” hisses Floki in his ear, suddenly sitting beside him, though Athelstan did not notice him approach. His voice cracks when he speaks, his head twitching like a cornered animal, but Athelstan has seen enough cornered animals by now to know that they are the most dangerous. He lifts a hand to his face, slowed by drink, and finds that his cheeks are burning.

He meets the storyteller’s blackened eyes. “Perhaps I have had too much to drink,” he says.

Floki tilts his head and grins. “Perhaps,” he says slowly, drawling the word, accent so thick that Athelstan can barely make out the meaning. He is quite sure that Floki does this deliberately; Floki does not think a Christian has any right to speak the language of his gods, though he does not seem to mind sharing his company, these days.

“You could buy your way out, if you minded so much,” he adds, reaching down and tearing some meat from his platter. He sniffs it before popping it in his mouth - he always does.

“I don’t understand,” Athelstan says, shrugging. “Mind what?”

Floki’s hands are lighter than Ragnar’s, and his palms are rougher, and his nails longer, and it is entirely different when he stretches out a finger to trace the edge of Athelstan’s tonsure; gone now, all gone, betrayed by the truth of his own flesh. He draws the circle, and this time Athelstan does not flinch. Perhaps it is the drink. Perhaps.

“Tell me, priest,” Floki asks, chewing on the word as much as the meat, “how long did your man on the cross take to die?”

Athelstan presses his lips together, but does not rise to the bait. He will not contradict Floki just to be mocked. He pulls himself to standing, and though Floki would tower over him normally, being some two hands taller, he seems to grow.

“Your  _man on the tree_  may have suffered longer,” he spits - and it gives him more pleasure than he would admit to watch the way Floki’s face tenses as he speaks - “but Christ died for his children, not for his own gain. He died out of kindness, and for the sins of men, and he was reborn. For love.”

Floki is angry. Athelstan can see it. But he will not show it, not here, not now.

“More fool Christ,” he murmurs.

And the smile creeps back in.

 

He stands at the end of the dock and watches the boat set sail.

There is silence here, at this space at the edge of the world. The ship sails back to his homeland, to the land of his birth, and yet with every stroke of the oars he can feel himself slipping further away from it.

They believe in Ginnungagap, here; the void between the worlds, into which grows the World Tree, sacred and profane. He knows why. In this world, death is glory and life is shameful; fire is cleansing and ice means home. Bondage means freedom. It makes no sense and more sense than anything he has ever been taught.

Before he saw as through a mirror dimly. Now he has dirt on his hands, and hair on his chin, and a host of devils at his back; a master to serve, a mistress to honour, and a home to keep. He will be free, when the time is right. When he is ready to want it. And now -

“Athelstan,” Lagertha calls behind him. He looks over at her. She has a hand on her stomach where the babe once grew, and she looks weary and in no mood to be crossed. He smiles. He nods. He turns his back on the ocean and the land of his fathers and runs to help her inside.

He is damned. But if he is a damned man, then he is not an unhappy one.

For Odin gave his right eye for knowledge, and now Athelstan can see.

**Author's Note:**

> some of these quotes and references are anachronistic - i hope you will forgive me.


End file.
